DIALING UP THE BIZARRE: Purported Fundraising ‘Army’ Displays Photo Of Accused AdSurfDaily Huckster Andy Bowdoin Smiling Ear To Ear

Some ASD members say this smiling and vigorous Andy Bowdoin is ready to do battle with the government in a "David vs. Goliath" clash. Bowdoin himself has advised a federal judge that he suffers from various medical maladies, including a lack of quality sleep, and his trial should be moved from the District of Columbia to Florida. The judge denied Bowdoin's bid to move the trial.

Although AdSurfDaily President Andy Bowdoin has described himself in court filings as an elderly man suffering from diabetes, lack of sleep caused by worrying about his ill wife, hyperlipidemia, coronary heart disease and multiple Transient Ischemic Attacks (ministrokes), some of his supporters apparently disagree with Bowdoin’s assessment of his own medical condition.

A website with a URL of AndysFundraisingArmy.com has posted a photo of Bowdoin purportedly taken on June 24. The photo shows a vigorous-looking Bowdoin seated in a chair and smiling broadly.

The website features a second photo of Bowdoin wearing a business suit, smiling at the camera and taking care of paperwork.  A claim is made on the website that “over 88% of the members surveyed said that once Andy wins his court case and ASD is found to not be a Ponzi Scheme, they would want to immediately continue with their Ad Surf Daily business, because it is a proven, popular and successful way to advertise and build a great income with the ASD home business opportunity.”

What’s needed to get ASD restarted on a date uncertain — presumably with Bowdoin at the helm — is a $500,000 “minimum requirement” to pay for lawyers, according to the fundraising website. The website appears to have been registered using an address of a Florida law firm that is not the same firm associated with either of Bowdoin’s current civil and criminal attorneys.

Precisely who registered the site is unclear. The name on the domain registration is “Andys Defense Fund.”

And the fundraising website also makes other broad claims, including a claim that a survey sample of 140 ASD members can be reliably applied to a group of 123,000 ASD members as a whole.

“[P]er standard and accepted industry guidelines, public opinion surveying of 140 members of a large group of members that all share a common interest or purpose, of any size, even in the millions, will give an excellent cross section of the opinions and viewpoints of the entire group,” the fundraising site claims while asking ASD members to prepare to fork over a donation.

Among the claims below a subhead of “MORE GOOD NEWS” is that “A Recent Survey of ASD Members Proves that the Vast Majority of You Want to Join Andy’s Fundraising Army.”

The fundraising site, however, does not describe the characteristics of the 140 ASD members purportedly sampled. Nor does it define what specific surveying “standard” it applied or define the source of the purported “industry guidelines.”

Any claim that a small sampling result culled from individual ASD members can be applied to a much larger group is dubious, if not reckless. The fundraising site did not define any variables in the purported sample — for instance, whether the sample was top-heavy with members inclined to disbelieve the government’s take on events for personal or political reasons or out of fear they could become implicated in the ASD probe, whether the sample consisted of people who made money or lost money in ASD, the amount made or lost and the amount directed at ASD, whether members had large downlines, midsized downlines or small downlines and the degree to which downline members were affected by ASD developments and whether survey respondents had filed claims for restitution that the government announced more than two years ago would be paid from funds seized from Bowdoin’s personal bank accounts.

One of the accounts contained more than $31 million; another contained more than $23 million, and Bowdoin’s accounts contained more than $65.8 million in the aggregate, according to court filings. Bowdoin also allegedly moved “several million” dollars offshore prior to the August 2008 seizure of funds in his identified U.S. bank accounts. Meanwhile, ASD was alleged to have about $1 million in an account on the Caribbean island nation of Antigua in an account under a different name, according to court filings.

Although the fundraising site also claims Bowdoin “never backed down” in his battle against the government and “has always kept on fighting,” federal prosecutors said in 2009 that Bowdoin had signed a proffer letter in the case and acknowledged the government’s material allegations were all true.

Bowdoin’s own court filings show that he met with federal prosecutors over a period of at least four days, provided information against his interests and sought to cooperate because cooperation possibly could keep him out of jail.

Meanwhile, the fundraising site claims that Bowdoin lost his fight over the seized money “due to the lone decision made by that one single Civil Court Judge,” but it does not reveal that Bowdoin also lost two forfeiture appeals and that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia circuit upheld the rulings made by U.S. District Judge Rosemary M. Collyer.

At the same time, the fundraising site claims that ASD members who send in $50 or a smaller sum to fund a legal war chest “can finally have a strong fighting chance to get their advertising money returned to them.”

But the fundraising site does not reveal that the government already has set up a restitution program and that prosecutors alleged that ASD was an investment program disguised as an “advertising” program — one consisting of multiple illegal parts and one that Bowdoin and others were maneuvering to move offshore before it popped up on the radar of U.S. regulatory and law-enforcement agencies.

Nor did the fundraising site reveal that the government has alleged that ASD had “special” members and that at least some of the special members were participants in a previous autosurf fraud scheme.

About the Author

7 Responses to “DIALING UP THE BIZARRE: Purported Fundraising ‘Army’ Displays Photo Of Accused AdSurfDaily Huckster Andy Bowdoin Smiling Ear To Ear”

  1. Patrick, this is just more of Andy’s spin on reality, heck, he even hired a guy to coordinate things, all the while telling everyone he is broke and needs money. How is he funding the fundraising? With leftover Ad Pscks?

    And yes, that is not an accurate sampling of the entire ASD membership. I am among those who put in a “negative opinion” of saint Uncle Andy. It’s all bovine fecal matter. Perhaps these mini-strokes have taken a far greater toll on Andy’s already muddled ideas of truth and honesty. “Successful Businessman”, my ass!! He’s a conman, plain and simple.

  2. A website with a URL of AndysFundraisingArmy.com has posted a photo of Bowdoin purportedly taken on June 24. The photo shows a vigorous-looking Bowdoin seated in a chair and smiling broadly.

    That website is simply loading a page hosted on http://www.millionairepromo.com. That site is associated with Tari Steward, an ASD promoter.

  3. It’s interesting to note that all the to-ing and fro-ing, all the machinations, all the threats, all of the hundreds of thousands of column inches have come to nothing.

    All the bleatings of the Bob Guenthers, Professor Moriartys and numerous Philadelphia lawyers’ have not made one, single, solitary bit of difference, other than to slightly delay the inevitable.

    It’s all too easy to get caught up in the soap opera and lose sight of the reality that Bowdoin is busted, ASD is kaput and everything is progressing exactly to script.

  4. And, of course, the website is registered to Andy himself! LOL

    How funny is that.

    He’s the point man for his own army of ethical people wanting to save his skin.

    hahahahahaha

    DNS info below.

    ARWR

    http://who.godaddy.com/whois.aspx?domain=andysfundraisingarmy.com&prog_id=GoDaddy

    Registrant:
    Andys Defense Fund

    1185 Immokalee Road
    Suite 110
    Naples, Florida 34110
    United States

    Registered through: GoDaddy.com, Inc. (http://www.godaddy.com)
    Domain Name: ANDYSFUNDRAISINGARMY.COM
    Created on: 29-Jun-11
    Expires on: 29-Jun-12
    Last Updated on: 29-Jun-11

    Administrative Contact:
    Bowdoin, Thomas [email protected]
    Andys Defense Fund
    1185 Immokalee Road
    Suite 110
    Naples, Florida 34110
    United States
    (239) 438-4604

    Technical Contact:
    Bowdoin, Thomas [email protected]
    Andys Defense Fund
    1185 Immokalee Road
    Suite 110
    Naples, Florida 34110
    United States
    (239) 438-4604

  5. When I first saw the ‘poll’ on the fund raising website I happen to be drinking a coffee while reading it and spit coffee all over my monitor! Must be the same people who take the polls for Obama on the status of the economy and unemployment numbers…. or the popularity numbers for Piggylosi and Reid? No matter how you try to explain it 140 members is .11382113821138211 per cent of 123,000 people…..11% ! I wonder if they counted Erma, and the other staff members…..?????????

  6. […] and MLM huckster Thomas A. “Andy” Bowdoin missed its advertised launch date Friday. Bowdoin, 76, was positioned as “David” on a “temporary” site that advertised his purported need to start an […]

  7. […] Bowdoin effectively having been out of public view for nearly three years, the purported “army” teased potential contributors for days with a photo that showed Bowdoin smiling broadly and looking confident. Among other […]